Iris Scanning Controversy Grew From Multiple Mistakes

Friday

Jun 14, 2013 at 11:46 PM

BARTOW | The unraveling began in late May, when the Polk County School District sent home a letter to parents.

By MATTHEW PLEASANTTHE LEDGER

BARTOW | The unraveling began in late May, when the Polk County School District sent home a letter to parents. A new pilot program, it explained, will track bus riders using a feature unique to every child — their irises.Parents could opt out, but by the time they learned about it, a company named Stanley Convergent Security Solutions had already captured images of about 750 children's eyes.When parents began to complain, the district halted the pilot, chalking up its failure to inform parents to a clerical error. Rob Davis, a district administrator whose division includes transportation and school security departments, said his secretary belatedly emailed the letter to principals, who would have sent it to parents.But a look at emails sent among district staff members, along with interviews with administrators, show the late letter was only one of multiple behind-the-scenes mistakes that left parents and some top school administrators in the dark, allowing a company to collect children's biometric information without the parents' knowledge.The records show:* The pilot program would have operated without cost to the district for 60 days but still required a contract. District staff members, however, allowed Stanley Convergent onto three East Polk campuses to scan children's eyes before a contract was finalized.* John Stewart, interim school superintendent at the time, should have had final approval over the contract. As the company prepared to take the iris scans, Davis directed staff members to send the contract to Stewart. Despite his request, it apparently never made it, meaning Polk's top school official didn't learn about the program until the scans had already taken place.* District staff members also failed to discuss the program with Stewart in person. That apparently includes Lum Thornhill, the assistant director of operations, and Ann Marshall, a safe schools specialist who is also assigned to the superintendent's office to handle public records requests. According to emails, Marshall played a key role in organizing a schedule for the iris scans and facilitating communication between the company and district."It's just a busy place," Marshall said this week. "And unless you have an appointment to move something ahead, it's not like you have an opportunity to chitchat. It's not that anyone didn't want to tell him (Stewart)."Had the contract made it beyond Davis and his staff, the program would likely have been halted until the district thoroughly vetted the idea with parents, said Wes Bridges, School Board attorney."It was almost a comedy of errors," Bridges said.Davis, who acknowledges the errors, said the district has instituted changes to ensure nothing like this happens again.Meanwhile, Stanley Convergent, which declined to comment for this story, told the district it deleted the information gathered from students. In a statement released after parents learned about the system, the company tried to reassure parents the technology is a safety tool and added that it's up to schools and parents to "select the appropriate security solution."Some parents, however, aren't appeased. They cite an Internet age maxim: Nothing can be deleted completely.Connie Turlington, upset that her 11-year-old son was scanned at Davenport School of the Arts, said the mistakes appeared to be no coincidence."It sounds like a simple case of it's better to ask forgiveness than permission," Turlington said.April Serrano, whose 8-year-old son had his eyes scanned at Bethune Academy as part of the pilot, said she doubts the reasons the district gave for the system. The district says parents of bus riders call daily asking where their children are, causing officials to frantically track down when and where the child departed the bus."They have no concept of what they've done here," Serrano said. "I feel like my son's civil rights were violated."

SALES PITCHThe district has tried other systems to track students on buses, and they have failed.In 2009, it pursued a system that would have tracked bus riders using fingerprint scanners. When that never materialized, it opted for a radio-frequency transmitter system that relied on students to carry a special card onto the bus.That free pilot program fizzled last year when students began losing or forgetting their cards.Stanley Convergent, which the district says monitors some of its campus alarm systems, came into the picture sometime this spring. Marshall said she noticed an iris-scanning device advertised among the company's promotional material. "Because you're a customer," she said, "you get — for lack of a better word — sales propaganda."Davis seems unsure exactly how the pilot program materialized at the end of this school year. He was under the impression it would begin in the 2013-2014 school year, he said, when the School District could orient parents to the technology's relatively new application. He learned in May that his staff had already scheduled the company to begin registering students this year by scanning their eyes."At meetings that were held with other staff members, (district workers) agreed to do that," Davis said. "It was under my division, and I don't want to put the blame on any other shoulder because I didn't do the checks and balances."Marshall emailed principals with Davenport School of the Arts, Bethune Academy and Daniel Jenkins Academy on May 14 announcing the pilot program and asking for dates when company representatives could visit to enroll students. "We will be able to track the students with a blink of the eye using iris biometric identity," she wrote."This is exciting!" Brian Kier, principal of Davenport School of the Arts, responded to Marshall. "Will you be contacting parents about this?"Marshall wrote back, telling him the company would be at his school the next week, apparently never addressing his question about parents.The district scrambled to send a letter home to parents, giving them the option to keep their students out of the program. "Please notify your principal if you prefer that your child not participate in the program," it read.Serrano said she received her letter May 24. By then, the scans had already taken place.

‘SOUNDS GOOD'As Stanley Convergent prepared to visit schools, emails show Stephanie Hebel, a representative with the company, began asking the district to complete a contract.Assistant operations director Thornhill emailed Davis on May 21 that a paralegal with the district needed to make changes to the contract. Thornhill also said the contract had to be approved by the superintendent. Davis responded that day, asking him to send it to the superintendent.But there was a problem, Thornhill noted in one of his May 21 emails. Stanley Convergent had flown employees in to take iris scans, and they were scheduled to start the next morning. However, he wrote, a representative with the company said it could "do the registration and keep the files on a computer until we get the clearance."In an interview, Davis said he misunderstood the email, saying he thought Thornhill had been advised by a paralegal reviewing the contract that the iris scans could be taken before the superintendent had approved the paperwork."Sounds good," Davis wrote Thornhill.Amid the May 21 back and forth between Davis and Thornhill, safe schools specialist Marshall wrote her coworkers, "Do we need to halt?"No one responded.

DROPPED BALLWhy didn't the contract ever make it to the superintendent? Davis said he thinks his staff never received a version of the contract from the legal department. Thornhill did not return a message left at his office.But once complaints started arriving, school attorney Bridges wrote staff members that the superintendent had ordered the pilot stopped. In an email, Bridges seemed to grasp its implications immediately."The ACLU is one phone call away," he wrote, "and then it becomes a much larger conversation."Bridges readily acknowledges the mistakes the district made but defends the intentions of the program."They had an honorable goal," he said. "But, unfortunately, we dropped the ball in processing the document."As a result of the parents' opposition to the pilot program, Davis said the district is no longer considering using biometric devices on school buses. In the future, any similar programs would be based on parents opting in, rather than opting out. Davis said he has also instituted a system of checklists to ensure contracts are routed through the proper channels."We learned a valuable lesson here, to say the least," he said. "It was truly not to fast track or invade anyone's privacy. It was trying to give parents an opportunity to have an extra layer of security if they chose that."Some parents might have been more open to the idea had the district handled communication better, said Doug Hackworth, president of Davenport School of the Arts' parent-teacher group."I'm all for being able to find out where my child is during the school day," he said. "But I want that under my control and to know exactly how it works and who has control of it."Weeks later, April Serrano said she is still rattled when she remembers her son's experience at Bethune Academy. He told her he was asked to stare into a blue light until it changed color. To him, she said, it seemed like a game."Just repeating that story makes my skin crawl," Serrano said.

[ Matthew Pleasant can be reached at matthew.pleasant@theledger.com or 863-802-7590. ]